~ Life's experiences are either transformative or an impediment to reaching one's potential, but they all come together in one mosaic, which this blog will examine.

After Bible study and worship this morning, I scouted East Tower Grove for a place to eat Sunday dinner. Each place I checked out was either closed on Sunday, or it was not the atmosphere I was looking for. What I was looking for, I’m not sure, I just knew some of these places did not fit my mood. I wandered back to Lafayette Square and settled on Laredo, a small Mexican restaurant, which I thought was closed. It was not overly noisy and had pleasant Mexican music playing at about the right volume. The grilled salmon resting on a bed of grilled vegetables–spinach, broccoli, potatoes–and a few pieces of grilled pineapple was delicious

It’s fifty-eight degrees now where I am sitting on the sidewalk patio in front of the gelateria drinking a Pumpkin Latte. It may be even warmer with the radiant heat from the brightly shinning sun. Paco is certainly enjoying it, with hardly a shiver, he’s stretched out on the warm concrete. When he’s warm enough, he enjoys sidewalk cafes for people (and dog) watching. I say warm enough because he often shivers when the temperature is a pleasant seventy degrees.

Tonight is going to be another late night–fourth World Series game. We (Cardinals) won the game last night on a weird call. Allen Craig, recovering from a foot/ankle injury suffered on September 4, with a pinch-hit double in the ninth inning advanced Yadier Molina to third base. There was onlyone out, the score was tied. Then, one for the record-books.

Jon Jay batted next and grounded out to the Red Sox second baseman, who threw to home effectively eliminated Molina trying to score. The Red Sox catcher then threw to third trying to silence Craig who was attempting to gain a base. The catcher’s throw sailed past the third-baseman into left field. Craig, rightly so, attempted to score,but was tripped up by the third baseman who was lying on the ground after trying to catch the throw from the catcher.

Craig regained his footing and ran for home sliding into the plate, not knowing that obstruction was called on the third-baseman by the third base umpire. The call automatically gave him the next base, in this case, the winning run on the last out of the ninth inning.

The Cardinals are now ahead two games to one in the seven-game series. They need only win two of the last four games.

Society enters long discussions, some filled with a great deal of contention, others with unabated emotion, and still others with a cavalier nonchalance around homeless issues.

I am in the middle of these discussions. I don’t mean I am engaged in conversations about homelessness; I mean I live in the middle of homelessness. Homeless people live on my street. They walk around my neighborhood. They eat donated sandwiches while sitting on street curbs and sidewalks where my dog Paco and I walk every day. They sleep in doorways of Christ Church Cathedral. I pass homeless people on the sidewalks who are in wheelchairs, use canes or walkers, and whose chairs are motorized. They sit at sidewalk cafes until asked to move along. I live in the middle of discussions centering on homelessness.

I know or have observed homeless narratives and/or drama of people in my neighborhood. Take for instance the man who walks around the neighborhood pulling his twenty-two inch piece of luggage. He is always on the way to somewhere as though he is about to miss his connection in an airport concourse. The urgency of his walk belies his aimlessness. His smile is genuine, his life is good. Just ask him. “How are you,” I say. “By God’s grace I woke up this morning,” he says. “And he gave me these two good legs to walk on;” and he’s off on his urgent aimlessness.

Or there’s Stan, who has his regular “route.” Along about 8:30 he’ll walk up to the sidewalk chairs and tables in front of Nara Cafe Hookah Lounge and Mediterranean Cuisine. He pulls a chair out enough to sit down even though it is still cabled together with the other chairs and tables. He always has his eyes searching for his “friends.” Soon one comes by and hands him the morning’s Post-Dispatch with a cup of coffee. Approximately fifteen minutes later a couple comes out of a nearby condominium and hands him a plastic shopping bag. They speak briefly and then walk on. Stan opens the bag and takes out a lidded styrofoam take-home carton. Homeless Stan opens it and begins eating his breakfast while reading the morning paper. Breakfast at a sidewalk cafe. After a while, he walks with a sense of purpose toward his next “appointment.”

I speak to them every morning, a mother and her young son, as they wait for the school bus on the corner of Locust Street and Fourteenth. The boy, eight or nine years old, is always pleasant approaching the day with confidence as though life is good and he’s eager for what will unfold. His mother, usually pleasant and coaching the boy even though the boy seems to be calm and in better control of the situation. Neither of them have the appearance of homelessness and I wouldn’t have suspected they were except for the fact that on some mornings I see them exiting the homeless shelter, and, on a couple of late evenings, I’ve observed them entering for the night.

I watched a man dig into his twenty-two inch wheeled luggage and pull out a piece of change and hand it to another homeless man.

A homeless man, sitting on a curb with crossed arms resting on his knees and his forehead on his arms. I watched as a woman slid her hand gently onto the man’s arm while on the other side of him a man had an arm around his shoulders. All three were wearing dirty, ragged “homeless clothing.” An ambulance was just arriving.

How do you define “home.” One definition found at dictionary.com states, “the place in which one’s domestic affections are centered.” One definition often leads to another. Domestic: “of or pertaining to the home, the household, household affairs, or the family.” So Home: the place in which one’s familial affections are centered. It could be argued that among “homeless” people, “family” units co-exist within a shelterless existence.

Are these people homeless, or do they lack permanent shelter they could call their own space?

Jonathan washed the windows this morning. It is a lazy kind of morning at the gelateria. Jonathan, the owner of Gelateria Tavolini, and I were sitting inside the gelateria at my favorite tavolini (Italian for little table) talking and suddenly he got up and said, “I should make myself useful. I think I’ll wash the windows.” They needed it, badly. I had been aware of how seriously they needed attention and assumed Jonathan had a window cleaning service that came by regularly, and that it was about time, or past time, for them to appear. I hadn’t told him of my concern about his dirty windows reflecting badly on his business.

Cleaning windows is a science. I don’t know if any school has a course on window washing in its science department, but they should. I have watched the window cleaners that service our building and, from my window, the building behind mine. The science is in how the water is applied, not too much that it lays on the window ledge and forbid that it drip down the building like the water feature at the Central Library when it is being turned off and slowly stops the flow down the side but there is still some water slipping over the edge. But there needs to be enough water applied that it doesn’t completely dry, particularly in the heat of summer, before the squeegee is applied.

The squeegee must be held properly and moved across the window at the correct angle. If careful attention is not given to these matters, a streak of water will be left behind requiring a second pass, which invariably will leave another streak that cannot be corrected because by this time the water has dried.

Professional window washers know the correct way to hold, and move the squeegee at the right angle, but it’s not the same every time. It depends on which section of the window is being squeegeed. The edges require careful attention to keep from leaving a bead of water along the edge of the window next to the frame. For the main expanse of the window, a waving motion of the squeegee across the window beginning with the top of the window moving down with the squeegee angled just so, keeps clearing the water from the glass so it runs down the window. With the last pass across the bottom the window, without pausing the sweeping motion of his hand holding the squeeze, he completes his swipe and, continuing the motion, tucks the squeegee into a scabbard on his belt.

The size and shape of the window also informs the squeegee holder the correct way to move the squeegee to remove the water without having to make a second pass or, please don’t let it happen, have to apply more water. Small square panes, long skinny panes, huge expansive panes all require a different technique.

I watched as Jonathan retrieved his bucket of water from the back of the store, brought out a ladder, moved the sidewalk tables and chairs away from the windows and proceeded to tackle the grime and splatters that always appear when rain hits dirty windows. He did fast work of it. But I was sitting inside and could easily see the streaks. I thought about telling him about them, then changed my mind. Then I changed my mind again and told him, pointing out where the streaks were. He wasn’t through with his window-washing strategy he told me. His is a two-phase plan. After finishing with water and squeegee on the outside and a damp cloth on the inside to eliminate water on the inside sill, he went back to the back of the shop and came out with, you guessed it, Windex and paper towels and went to work once again.

As he was working, at one point I said, “Jonathan, I feel guilty watching you work and not offering to help.” His reply was a quote from his dad, “Once you retire you’ve earned the right to sit and supervise.”

I must say now that he’s done, not only do the windows look better but everything inside looks better as well. It’s brighter and more pleasing to be here. Before Jonathan cleaned the windows, my vision of the street outside was becoming increasingly dim. It often takes a second party to “clean the window” so one can find the beauty that’s been there all along. Clear vision of the world brings beauty to the soul.

Life’s designs take on the hues of a colorful drama at the gelateria, a warm inviting urban coffee shop with the usual variety of speciality coffees. Of course, being a gelateria it specializes in Italian ice cream as well. It has a few stuffed chairs and conversation is available around a “tavolini” (Italian – small table), of which there are five. I commandeer a tavolini most mornings. While occupied with reading or writing, I observe the drama around me. One of the definitions of “drama” is “any situation or series of events having vivid, emotional, conflicting, or striking interest or results.”

It was at the gelateria, that I had a late night conversation with a couple of friends recently discussing life choices, job decisions and organizational ethics, structure, and processes–one an emerging educator, the other still searching. I remember being young and filled with idealism and energy. By the time I was their age, I had a graduate degree and had already nailed down my niche in the professional world with three years into my career. However, contemporary youth culture has stretched farther into the lifecycle. Taking on the responsibility for and trappings of being adult has pushed further into life than was acceptable when I young. I married late as a twenty-seven-year-old, which today, in some circles, would be early. It seemed these young, barely thirty-somethings, were still searching for life, waiting for it to settle down and be what they envisioned, instead of living it.

Around 11:30 AM on Labor Day, a couple enter the gelateria and order drinks, she a specialty coffee and he an iced drink. They sit across a corner of a table from each other. He sits with his arms on the table, wrists crossed, and looks off to the side with a sadness dripping from his face. She is watching him closely, her eyes never wavering. He’s not looking at her and she gently places her hand on his arm. He turns his sad eyes and looks at her. She slides her hand on his arm to his hand. He wraps his fingers around her hand and looks with deep appreciation into her eyes. Gradually they engage in conversation and he begins talking. After a few minutes, a smile comes as he talks. She gives an occasional affirmative response. A piece of life’s design is taking shape in the gelateria on Washington Avenue.

Some people might call these vignettes drama, and in a very significant way, they are. Life is a colorful drama, a story enacted sometimes for private audiences and at other times for the world, events of vivid, emotional, sometimes conflicting interest. These dramas are filled with a delightfully evolving kaleidoscope of colorful lives that weave in and out of each other. Each of us contribute to and find value in these dramas making life’s designs beautiful, sometimes heroic, often unsettling, but always colorful. These are our lives.

I’ve been looking for God in my community, Washington Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The evangelical Christian would would look for him in language. The presence of certain vocabulary and the absence of other vocabulary signals God’s presence for them. A Bible study held at noon for business people, and in a condo for loft dwellers would be a stamp of God’s presence. Or, they would see it visually in one person, usually with a Bible, in prayer with another person leaving the impression that evangelism was happening on Washington Avenue or in a coffee shop. But does the absence of, or presence of, certain vocabulary, a group of people studying the Bible together, or a public evangelistic encounter indicate the absence of God in his creation?

I have questions today: Does God work only in the lives of people who have made a focused commitment to him through faith in Jesus as the Christ? Is God completely absent from all else in society? Is everything that is good but does not emanate directly from a conscious submission to the grace of God in Christ just a moral principle at work in society? What does it mean for a society to have “redeeming” qualities that are never consciously, overtly connected to acknowledging Jesus as the embodied presence of God on earth–God’s Son?

Can God be present across the street in front of the hookah lounge and the tattoo parlor? Is he somewhere under a tattoo. or in a tattoo? Can he be present in the sharing of a glass of wine during dinner? Was he there in a conversation I was in one day last week between a lawyer, a coffee shop owner, a Japanese judo instructor, a man confined to a wheelchair, and myself? One is smoking, the shop owner and judo instructor will take off on an eight-mile bike ride in a moment, the guy in the wheelchair is hopeful that the judo instructor will enable him to be free of the wheelchair and on crutches again, the lawyer bought a newspaper, brought it outside, dismantled it, relegated the comics, ads, sports sections to the trash while telling me he had propped a book for me to read against my condo door.

Was the God of hope and new beginnings in any of this? Does he only show himself in the life of a committed extroverted Christian? If we see God in the design of life on Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis, that means one thing. If we don’t, is it because we’re not looking for him? Or, is he not present or hiding; and if he were present we would know it? Is he a God who reveals himself or hides himself, making it a kind of game for us to find him? Just wondering.

Waiting, regardless of the reason or whether or not it is volitional, adds interest, growth and enhancement to Life’s Designs. On the morning of August 19 on my walk down Locust Street and back up Washington Avenue, I saw a friend on the other side of Washington sitting in front of the Washington Avenue Post coffee shop. He was drinking his morning coffee while waiting for a friend to join him for a bike ride.

Whether sitting drinking coffee while waiting for someone, standing in line in a supermarket, waiting in an airport lounge to board a plane, or sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting is a good opportunity to observe other people. We often call this “people watching” and engage in it mindlessly. However, by observing cultural nuances surrounding you, you can discover designs in other people’s lives that can enrich your own.

For waiting to be productive, one must observe with the intent of learning how people respond to or deal with life in the moment. I’m not suggesting we approach these observations negatively. Most of us don’t need to exercise aspects of our personalities that cast negative aspersions on people. That activity often comes without exercise, it saddens me to say.

Observations made during productive waiting involves a desire to learn, to expand horizons, to enter into a different perspective. Once in a Walmart store while standing in line waiting to check out, I observed a mother, of an ethnicity different than mine and others in the immediate area, discipline her crying child, who was creating something of a small “scene.” Here was an opportunity for productive waiting while standing in line, an opportunity to broaden both my societal and cultural understanding.

Certain cultures have child-rearing practices that differ from other cultures. This is true of cultures at the micro level of local communities and neighborhoods as well as cultures separated by national origin and lingo-ethnicity. My thought response must not be an immediate negative criticism of what is being observed without first seeking to understand the cultural norms from which the mother is operating. Why did she use language that seemed cruel and harsh (I say “seemed” because of the tone of her voice, her facial expression and the child’s reaction. I did not understand the language she used)?

Her approach effectuated a response in the child that both stopped the crying and elicited in him a meek demeanor though not cowering nor fearful. The approach quieted the child, but was it the best action for long-term development for the child? I don’t know; I don’t fully understand the culture. I did appreciate the resolution that appeared to be somewhat good for all, the child, the parent, the clerk, and the people in line. I wish I knew more of the culture.

I could have had an immediate impulse to be critical of the woman for speaking, what seemed to me, sharp and angry words to a defenseless child. Or, I could appreciate an interaction that brought peace in a stressful situation, even though I didn’t fully understand the transactions between mother and child due to my lingo-cultural disadvantage. Also, the clerk, to provide harmony within our American society, which values peace and minimal invasion of personal space, handed the child a sucker, with the parent’s approval. The child was happy, the mother smiled, chatter started up in the line as it began to move again, and life returned to normal.

Productive waiting can also be a mirror that reflects our own attitudes and actions. We can see in other people something that is positive and good and recognize that our own life comes up short. As a college freshman, I once waited in line in the Hannibal, Missouri, downtown post office to mail a package. A professorial type person was at a counter off to the side going through mail he had retrieved from his box when a younger person my age entered the post office and greeted him. They struck up a conversation obviously knowing each other. I watched and listened, not so much to specific words as to the flow. What struck me most, and what I remember after fifty-five years, is that the younger late teen would interrupt the forty-something, who would immediately stop what he was saying, even in mid-sentence, and focus attention on the younger would-be adult.

I felt warmth slowly rise to my face, not so much because of embarrassment for the youth as for my own personal guilt for the times I had done the very same thing. That day in the post office while waiting in line I observed, I learned, I vowed not to repeat the poor etiquette of the youth, and to follow the example of the man, whom I later learned was a professor and who would teach one of my college classes. I learned the importance of focusing attention on the person with whom I’m talking, to listen actively, to refrain from focusing on myself and my next great contribution to the conversation. The person buying stamps at the window was through; it was now my turn to mail my package.

Engaging in thoughtful observation while waiting can be productive. We can learn and grow. Our horizons can expand. We can become better people. The designs of our lives can be enhanced.

Life’s interior design, surfaced through reflection, comes at the end of the experiment–Life, an experiment in living that doesn’t “just happen.” Oh, there are some people who live without intention, who treat life as though it just happens. They make no plans. If they had no external constraints, there would be no structure for walking through the hours in their days. They float through each day and stack them up as the years pass. Then, as their life’s experiment slides into the last phase, through reflection that inevitably comes with increasing age, they discover shadows lurking around inside.

Some people live their lives as though they have little control over it. Whatever happens is God’s will, they say. And so they absolve themselves of responsibility for everything that happens. Their thoughts go something like this: I messed up and lost my last job. God must be trying to teach me something. Or they might say about that which is good in life, I give God all the credit for what has happened in my life. It’s all his blessings. And so, they are just pawns in God’s hands. Everything good and everything bad is of God and one’s mind and heart, will, emotions, and actions have little to do with life. And yet, in these religiously committed lives, there are shadows lurking around inside, there are repressed suspicions that things could have turned out differently if more energy had been applied here, or a better thought-through decision had been made there; if emotion hadn’t controlled actions, or a moral lapse hadn’t occurred. Shadows will inevitably be found in life’s interior.

Other people live intentionally, planning their lives and trying to anticipate life events. They view life as being a huge laboratory in which they perfect their skill, demonstrate their knowledge, and display their experiment as one that meets with peer review, that works, that is profitable for themselves and for society. Their life experiment also slips into waning days like an old Polaroid photograph fading to a ghost of its former sharpness. Their lives have been productive, satisfying, fulfilled. Yet, they too find shadows lurking around in the quiet recesses of the inner self.

These shadows, these unaddressed issues from the past, were suppressed during a time when life was energy expended toward education, possibly marriage, raising children perhaps, advancing careers. All of these hopes and dreams were met with varying degrees of success. With or without success, when the end of the experiment is in view, the accumulated shadows of unresolved issues float into consciousness. There is now more time to reflect and that reflection surfaces what time had not allowed before.

I have shadows I haven’t dealt with in my life, some conscious personality traits and the verso of other personality traits. This sounds rather Jungian I suppose, the shadows and all that. Regardless of psychological labels, I’m at a stage in life when I have time for reflection, and that is good. Reflection opens us to possibilities, and, I suspect, should have been more a part of my life all along.

Reflection, as a mentor, guides our consciousness into the back corners of our mind to surface life experiences that can bring color and beauty to present living–even if these experiences were born out of difficulty and pain. Entering these shadows and walking through them will add to the topography of the soul that will produce a living landscape that is intricate, beautiful, and powerfully liberating for the self and for others, regardless of the pain and suffering that may have contributed to a suppression of them. My life’s interior design is beautiful in spite of what I see as unattractive. I need to do the hard, necessary work to expose the shadows to the light and, by dealing with them and through conversations of faith, discover the beauty hidden within.

We have all known of the close-knit community a small town can nurture–“it takes a village” and all that. The phrase often heard is “everyone knows everyone.” Community life in a small town is a cohesive whole. Five years ago when talking with friends in one small town about my pending move to St. Louis, they couldn’t imagine doing so. In fact, they had a tinge of fear with only the thought of doing such a thing. They said they couldn’t leave their community where all their friends and family lived.

I moved to St. Louis, downtown St. Louis, bought a condo and moved in. I will have lived here for five years when October arrives. It has become my neighborhood, my community. This community is located on a stretch of Washington Avenue from approximately Tucker (12th Street) to 16th Street. The heart of the community is the 1400 block. People in this community live, work, and play here. There is a coffee shop-cum-urban convenience store, a gelateria, a judo establishment, a delicatessen, a dry cleaners, a fitness club, several restaurants, and pubs. These establishments are in street level spaces of six to ten floor, one-hundred-year-old former warehouses. The upper floors are condos and apartments.

The primary gathering place is often the coffee shop-cum-urban convenience store. Members of the community gather either at tables on the sidewalk or inside depending on the weather. Another place to connect is the gelateria, again, outside or inside.

The people who make up this community are varied, different, interesting. There is nothing homogenous about the community. In my building there is a young couple with two small children, one a preschooler and the other entered kindergarten this week, my next door neighbors. He paints houses, inside and out; she’s a student.

In the next block west another young couple–their all young around here–lives in a loft condo. I had seen them in the neighborhood, but it wasn’t until one evening last week that we get acquainted standing in front of Levine Hat store while I was out walking my dog, Paco. His wife has some Asian heritage. He is involved in graphic design and also dabbles in vinyl records. They enjoy traveling and we discovered we had both been enjoyed some time in Amsterdam in the same year recently.

A couple of days later, when in conversation with the graphic designer while I was drinking coffee at the gelateria, I mentioned something about the proprietor of the coffee shop-cum-urban convenience store was biking on the river trail with the older Asian gentleman who frequencies the coffee shop, the young man said, “He’s Japanese. He’s my wife’s father, my father-in-law.”

There is a criminal lawyer in my community who also mentors young lawyers and is an adjunct professor at a university in Atlanta, Georgia where I once lived. He meets with colleagues at the gelateria mapping out lawyer stuff.

Last Sunday, I ate lunch at a sidewalk restaurant about six blocks from the condo–under an umbrella while a soft rain fell all around me. On my walk home, about two blocks from my condo, I stopped for a conversation with a couple with whom I had a speaking relationship. Over the last few months I had watched the vacant southwest corner of Washington and 14th street change from weeds to a freshly paved parking lot, bright strips, and a credit card reader, no cash accepted. On this occasion, the owner and his wife were present. The installation of the new card reader had just been completed the previous day. We exchanged names and talked about the parking business, the economy in general, and living downtown. They are actually considering moving to our neighborhood from a suburb thirty miles out.

Tuesday, while drinking coffee and eating a scone at the gelateria, I picked up a word or two in a conversation across the room. My curiosity was piqued and I tried to capture the flow of words, but only caught a few, they were enough. A short while later, that conversation broke up but the gentleman whose words I had heard was free and standing off to the side. I walked over to him, introduced myself, and then asked if he had said something about a Christian and Missionary Alliance church. He said he had, so I followed up with, “So you know about the Dalat School.” The Dalat School is a Christian and Missionary Alliance boarding school for missionary kids and was located in Dalat, VietNam. In the middle of the VietNam War, just after the Tet Offensive took place in 1968, because of concerns about security the school was moved to Penang, Malaysia. I knew all about that; I had lived in Dalat shortly after the school had moved. The gentleman, whose conversation I had overheard, a Christian and Missionary Alliance pastor, is from Longview, Texas, and in town visiting his son, the proprietor of the gelateria.

One afternoon late last week I encountered an acquaintance, the publisher of a monthly news sheet–well, several sheets stapled together into a booklet–advertising neighborhood businesses. He lives above the gelateria, I think. He also runs a shuttle service, an old school bus, between Washington Avenue restaurants in our neighborhood and Cardinals baseball games. And then, on the way home, I passed by the neighborhood dry cleaners and waived to the clerk inside. He has a Chihuahua-Dachshund dog just like mine and lives about twelve floors up in an apartment on 4th street that overlooks the Mississippi River and the Arch.

The point is that in this downtown, urban setting there is a neighborhood, a community where people know each other, there are family connections, and greetings pass from one to another while doing life. Everyone of the people I’ve mentioned I know by name. It’s like a small town in the heart of the city, life’s designs in the city.

Major restoration work at the Old Cathedral at the east end of Walnut Street across Memorial Drive. The Cathedral rests on the edge of the Arch Grounds. The exterior renovation consists of stone work–repairing, replacing, re-grouting, etc. Father Billings, pastor at the Cathedral, told me last week that they would be working on it into the fall of next year. The building, one of the oldest west of the Mississippi with a cornerstone dated 1831, deserves to be taken care of due to its architectural interest and its historical significance. Historically, it is the first Catholic Cathedral west of the Mississippi River.

Father Billings just drove by and we exchanged good-day wishes. I think I’ll step inside for a moment of spiritual reflection.

The Old Cathedral

I enter and my attention is immediately focused on the altar. It is illumined by a wonderful round skylight above it. Not only is the alter bathed in light, but also a life-sized crucifix behind the altar is lit gathering my attention. I am overwhelmed at the thought of Christ’s suffering, for me. Statuary on both sides of the chancel area and other locations are significant to this church. One is of Saint Louis IX. At the back of the worship area is a painting of St. Louis IX dated 1888(?) I have already forgotten the exact date, although I have a nagging suspicion that it was an earlier than this. The Cathedral is a wonderful space for private meditation/reflection and corporate/public worship. The interior of the church is also undergoing refurbishing. The end results should enhance the worship of God and the enrichment of one’s faith.

I walk out of the building and into life surrounding it observing Life’s Designs–men working on the netting-enshrouded building, traffic exiting Interstate-70 and coming to an abrupt stop at Walnut Street where vehicle occupants can gain a moment’s peace observing the Cathedral, people rushing to occupy their office space, young adult joggers entering or leaving the Arch Grounds focused on their health and intent on their schedule.

For the last three days I have taken Paco, my little ten pound dog some call a Chiweenie and others call a Chidoxi (Chihuahua-Dachshund mix), for daily walks–without a leash! We walk from the condo west to Seventeenth Street then back east past the condo and cross Fourteenth Street. Continuing east, we go past the park, which is across Locust Street from the library, to Thirteenth Street, and turn north, cross St. Charles, and on to Washington Avenue. Turning west on Washington we pass many pedestrians and Flannery’s pub where there are usually diners sitting at tall sidewalk tables, particularly on our evening walks. Even with the crowd of diners he stays focused on our walk. Passing the groups of dinners we cross busy Fourteenth Street again and then on to Seventeenth from where we weave our way back over to the back entrance to the condo off of St. Charles Street.

Maybe you didn’t follow all those twists and turns, but Paco did superbly well. At street corners all I had to say was “wait” and he stopped and most times just sat down to wait for further instructions without my telling him to do so. He does less wandering and stays closer to me without the leash than when on the leash. I need to remember to take treats to reinforce good behavior on these walks.

I had always heard that a well-disciplined dog was a happy dog and had taken this truism at face value. I now have experienced it. I wonder, does this translate to the human race as well? I think we know the answer.